Candi Kirk: Grid Victim

By Patricia Florray

Lies written on paper cause difficult times in two women's lives and both struggle to clear their reputations. Both women remain firm in their faith that Our Creator understands their turmoils and will help guide them through their despair.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patricia H. Bean
• Release date: Oct 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781087813974

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

In the year 1985              Watch your kids

Ben and I have been married for a year now and

I’m happy. Of course, I can only speak for myself.   

      We don’t have excess money, which is very stressful, but we both have good jobs and are hopeful that one day we will be able to have less stress and some financial security. Right now we are focusing on making payments on Ben’s college loan, car payments, and saving to buy a house. We are renting one side of a duplex but have been told that investing in a house is a good investment. We are in our 20’s, have a healthy 1-year old son named Lee, and are hoping for a good life. We listen to and admire people who we believe have good values because we both had good mothers and good fathers who loved us, never abused us, and taught us good things such as it is a sin to harm other people or their property and it is good to try to help other people.

Both of our fathers served in the United States military and we proudly fly the U.S. flag on July 4th because we like our country. We believe in the freedoms given to people living in the U.S. and the standard of living. There are many great countries in the world, but we were born in the U.S. so this is where our lives are and we want to make the best of our lives. 

      So Ben Kirk and I have lived for only twenty plus a few years. Our short lives have been good. We went to good schools and churches. We have good families and friends. We always had food to eat. We both started working jobs when we were 16 years old or even younger when we babysat, cut grass, or washed cars to earn money. There has been peace in our lifetime so far and we do not take it for granted.

        Although we are proud to be Americans, we think about the situation in North America over 200 years ago when the British, French, Norse, and Spanish explorers were having conflicts with the Native American Indians, fighting for territories which resulted in the Native Americans being pushed westward. Although we did not even exist 200 years ago, it gives us sad feelings to think about all of the lives that were lost in those wars. I do not think that the Native American Indians should have lost most all of their lands. Whatever happened 200-500 years ago in North America, I do not think that the Native American Indians got a fair deal.  According to researchers, Lenape Native Indians from Asia came to North America over the Bering Strait to Alaska and onto the continent about 15,000 years ago.

      Ben and I both believe in an unseen God and that is one reason why we are together; we both wanted to marry a person of faith. We have discussed who we think God is and we think that God is loving and kind and wants good things for everyone on Earth. We wish that all people on earth could have a nice place to live, good food to eat, family and friends, access to good medical care, opportunities for education, freedom to read books and review public media, and freedom to work at a craft or job that they enjoy.

        While watching news broadcasts on TV, we heard about religious violence, sexual predators in religious entities, and preachers who stole money from their congregations. Why are people killing each other over different beliefs about Our Creator, prophets, and messiahs? It is the year 1985. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been fighting for 2,000 years for no good reasons except each religion believes that their religion is the only truth. The people who believe in the middle-eastern religions should realize that half of the world are Asian people who believe in the Buddha Self or the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, the teachings of Confucious and Lao Tzu who were Chinese, and the teachings of Oyasama who was a Japanese peasant woman. The ancient scriptures of the Asians are as old as the ancient writings of the Jews. Many people believe that all the religions are praising and thanking the same Creator of the Universe.

      We heard on the news about boxing matches in arenas where humans are beating on each other’s bodies for a money prize; is this ethical and why are humans supporting such a sport? It is a big world with many opinions.

      The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Aztec, Native American Indians, Inuit Eskimo, Norse, Eastern Islanders, Australian Aborigine Tasmanians, and African people all had spirituality and religions before scriptures were written on papyrus during the first and second millenniums. After papyrus was invented, scriptures were written down for the Jewish Torah, the Christian Gospels, the Chinese Tao Te Ching, the Persian Zoroastrian Avesta, the Hindu Vedas, Upanishads and Gita, the Buddhist Lotus Sutra, the Catholic Vulgate (earliest Bible that combined Jewish Torah and Christian Gospels), the Greek Septuagint (also early scriptures of the Jews and Christians), the Muslim Koran, the Japanese Kojiki, and the Sikh Adi Granth.  All of these holy books were written thousands of years ago or hundreds of years ago.

      I think the purpose of religions should be about giving thanks and praying to the unseen Creator of the Universe, friendships, good things, and helping each other.

      Also, about 2000 years ago, it is thought that people were called by one name or maybe two names to designate a tribe or a land. Now, there are so many people in the world that people have first and last names, or maybe three or four names.

In the Bible there is Jesus and there is also Jesus Justus mentioned in Colossians 4:11.

    I was out jogging one Saturday afternoon when I saw my neighbor’s 7-year old son start to descend a steep driveway on a skateboard toward the street; he was laying on his stomach with his arms outstretched. A car was coming down the road. I stopped running and stood in the middle of the street, waving my hands and signaling with vertical palms for the driver to stop the car, yelling Jason, Stop! to the boy. The driver slammed on the brakes of the car and by this time, the skateboard had reached the street. The car’s front tires stopped a few inches from Jason’s head. He rolled off the skateboard and started crying. Then his father came running out of the duplex saying, I saw what just happened and you are in trouble, young man. I told you not to play outside of the front yard. He spanked Jason on his derriere, not once but several hard blows.

        I was so grateful the car had not run over the young child; I was quite shaken up.  The driver of the car, looking frazzled, waved to us and drove away.

        I wondered why what just happened had to have happened.  I wondered if God placed me in that exact position on the street that day to intervene in the situation. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. If I had not seen the car and stood in the middle of the road, I wonder what would have happened. I wonder if the car would have whizzed by and missed colliding with him by microseconds.

        I also wondered if the spankings were necessary; 7-year old kids will be 7-year old kids but I have been hearing lately that spankings do not really accomplish anything. However, people have different opinions about spankings. Maybe just one spank, but why many hard spanks?

        My parents never spanked me, but they did yell at me or lecture me at times.

        I went into our side of the duplex. Lee and Ben were just waking up from an afternoon nap. I fixed a sippy cup of apple juice for Lee but I always added in a little water to dilute it a bit because fruit juices are high in sugar and too much sugar is not good for the teeth or the body because it can cause tooth decay, blurred vision, and diabetes. Sometimes I fix him a sippy cup of only water. Ben and I are young and learning how to be good parents; we are not perfect but we are trying to be the best parents we can be.

      We took Lee to a little neighborhood park that had swings and a ball field, swung him in the toddler swing and ran around the grassy area a little bit with him and took some pictures. Then we went to eat dinner at a local Mexican eatery. On the way home, we had to stop at the grocery store to buy a few things. On the way into the store, we found a wallet in the parking lot that contained more than $200 in cash that we brought into the store and gave to the store manager. When we got home, we read a few books to Lee and tucked him into his bed that still had guardrails to prevent him from falling off.

Once in our own bed, I think Ben and I fell asleep in less than 60 seconds. One time I was so tired I went to sleep in my clothes without getting into sleep attire.

CHAPTER 2

1986      Wednesday night church supper

        My babysitter Shelley opened her front door with a smile as she did most every morning. Her personality had a cheery disposition. Depending on which day of the week it is, she babysits two or three kids in addition to watching her own son Nathan who is 3-years old and her daughter Amy who is 1-year old. Shelley has two friends who live nearby who also watch kids to earn an income, and I have met her friends many times and they are nice people. They get together often so the kids can play together on backyard swing sets, play kickball, play with toys, or watch television. Shelley has been watching our son Lee for over a year now and I trust her completely. Her husband Mike is also a loving father and loving husband.

        Candi, don’t forget about the spaghetti supper at the church tonight, Shelley said to me. And Nathan’s birthday party for the kids is this weekend.

        No, I haven’t forgotten and Ben said he is coming to the church tonight, too. Thank you for inviting us. I replied.

        I hugged and kissed Lee goodbye and turned around to exit through the door, nearly tripping on a stuffed monkey laying the floor. I picked up the toy and voiced a monkey chirp while scratching the top of my head at the same time, trying to mimic a monkey, and the kids laughed. Shelley said Bye, Candi. Be safe out there. Shelley did not like to drive in heavy traffic so much and she usually drove on back quiet roads, unlike myself who had to drive interstates to get to work. After saying goodbye to Shelley and wishing them to have a good day, I drove to the subway train station. Thirty minutes later, I was seated at my desk working on computer programs, converting mainframe computer Assembler sequential batch programs into COBOL. I had mentally ‘switched gears’, as the analogy goes, from being a mom to being an employee. My IT (information technology) job involves developing and maintaining a computer user billing and accounting application. Computers are changing rapidly; just 5 years ago, computer programmers had to type computer instructions on punch cards that were fed into a card reader. Now program instructions are typed into a memory location on a board inside a computer monitor and the operating program reads the memory; this is much better because if you dropped punch cards on the floor you had to put them all back in order again before you put the stack back into the card reader.

      My first job out of college in 1982 was developing a hotel reservation system on a mini-computer. However, I took my current higher-paying IT job simply because Ben and I want to buy a house. All of the work factors of my first job were good, such as work location, commute time, benefits, salary, people, opportunities to learn new skills – but we needed more money for our dreams so that is why I took the new job.

        A work factor that I love concerning my present job is that every programmer on our team has a back-up programmer who knows the nature of what is going on with the other’s programs. Therefore, if my child is sick and I miss work, my back-up should be able to handle a problem. Several times, I have also been awakened by phone calls in the middle of the night to handle my back-up programmer’s program problem or my own. Once I even had to get dressed in the middle of the night and drive downtown to the city to get on my desktop computer and fix a problem. Thoroughly testing a program will avoid many problems, such as endless loops when your program performs the same few lines of code repeatedly over and over again because you forgot to tell the computer to change what it is doing. For an example, your code instructions tell the computer processor to read a file of records but you forgot to tell the computer to proceed to the next section of code when it reaches the end-of-file; this could cause an end-of-file error or an endless loop, depending on the code logic.  Another kind of error code could be if your program is expecting to read numbers only and the record contains alphabetic characters, spaces, or other special characters.  These types of errors caused the computer to appear as if it is doing nothing or produce wrong output. The input data that was input to the computer is only as good as it is; if the data entered is a jumbled mess, the output data will look like a jumbled mess. So that is why there are programs in our IT department in 1986 that ‘edit’ or read data and ‘error out’ data to reports that specify how to correct the data.

        For the basics, our computer program printouts show the files input to and output from the program processing, all of the memory locations that we have reserved, our program instructions, and an optional memory printout called a memory dump showing IBM EBCDIC characters. The times we requested memory dumps were if we were testing our program or it was running live in production mode but crashed and we could not figure out why the program was erroring so we needed to see what values were in what fields. For example, if my program is erroring out when it is doing a numerical calculation, I can check to see if there are numbers in all of the numeric fields because you cannot add an alphabetic character or a special character to a numeric character in our programs. For our numerical calculation, according to the IBM EBCDIC chart, the fields should all be showing F0 through F9 for the hex values, so if we saw anything other than F0 through F9 that could be causing the problem. We would have to write a short utility program to correct the bad field and run the utility program on the file with the bad record and then restart the program with the corrected file to see if the program would then run without crashing (erroring).

        A nightmare on my first job was that after our company had installed a hotel reservation system in the hotel’s computer, unbeknownst to us, the hotel was undergoing a renovation and had physically changed some of the room numbers. Because some of the room numbers had changed, unfortunately our computer app was checking people into some rooms that were already occupied. It took 2 days to straighten out that mess. I just kept thinking that ‘Humans make mistakes; no one is perfect except for God.’  When I told the hotel manager this, he did not appreciate my humor. Nevertheless, it was only partially our fault because they did not tell us that they had physically changed some of the room numbers.

        On the train going home that day, I lucked out because a man sitting next to me gave me a newspaper to read when he got off at his stop, so I had something to read. Ben and I had stopped the newspaper delivery to our front door in order to save more money for the down payment for our future house, if it happens. Lately I’ve been interested in the comics because I appreciate the witty humor that people think of; I certainly could not do it. I think comedians are very smart people. I was talking about the topic of humor with one of my coworkers who told me that comedy is a very hard profession because people have different opinions about what is funny according to their individual experiences in life. There are cultural differences about what people consider humorous or not. And people may consider something funny or not funny depending on what kind of mood they are in at a particular moment.  For stand-up comedy shows, the mixture of personalities and moods of the people in the audience at the time of the show may have an impact on how the comedian’s jokes and stories are accepted. 

        Some people do not like humor, laughter, smiles, or hugs.

        I had cut out several comics and taped them to the metal cabinets in my office cubicle as a reminder to myself that I wanted a little bit of humor to be a part of my life and personality because my older siblings liked to joke and they had made me laugh many times when we were growing up. When I was 8 years old, I remember my 17-year old brother would give me a nickel to make him a bologna sandwich or rub his shoulders for a few minutes. He said he was teaching me the ways of the world but I laugh when I think back to how many sandwiches I made for him and I think he was just manipulating me but maybe he was sincere. I had a girlfriend who also made sandwiches for her brothers; she said her brothers were helpless and did not know how to make a sandwich so that is why she did it for them. But even in high school she still made sandwiches for them so I didn’t believe at that time that her brothers could not make sandwiches.

The little comics would give me a little chuckle and a little diversion from all of the technical computer programming languages and manuals that I had to read all day on my job. Also, humor and laughing can cause your body to produce endorphins which are the body’s natural pain killers and which produce a general sense of well-being and may boost the body’s immune system.

        One of my coworkers had a daily calendar on his desk that had daily comics. Another coworker had a daily inspirational calendar with a profound verse for each day such as ‘A journey begins with the first step.’ Another coworker who loved nature had put up posters of flowery plants, birds, wolves, mountain views, and beachfront coastal scenes. Another coworker liked sports and had put up logos of all of his favorites sports teams. One co-worker had his childhood teddy bear on top of a cabinet in his cube.

        One of my favorite comics shows a mouse hiding behind an arched opening in a wall while the owner of the house is standing at the front door talking to a deliveryman who is saying: Someone at this address ordered 10 lbs. of cheese. That comic of Ziggy by Tom Wilson would make me laugh for thirty years and forever.

      I drove from the train station to Shelley’s house and picked up Lee and followed Shelley and Mike in the car to their church, where we met up with Ben.

        The spaghetti supper at Shelley’s church that night was lovely. It was $3 a plate for adults and $1 a plate for children. Lee was wearing a red shirt that day so if he splashed some spaghetti sauce on his shirt, well, it was a lucky break because the sauce would blend right in with the pattern. People were having conversations about happenings in their lives and some people were reminiscing about church attendances. An older couple was seated next to the table where Shelley, Mike, Candi, Ben and all of their children were seated.  The older man said to Shelley: I remember when I was a young boy and my parents took us to church every Sunday, my mom would bake 4 honey buns and put them in a pan and we would each eat one of them on the way to church. And there was a fountain outside the church on the sidewalk where we would rinse our hands and take a sip of water before we went into the church.

          And then a woman at another table turned around and shared a memory that she had: My church would have a pancake breakfast or pancake dinner every fall before a fall festival where people could sell crafts and Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations.

        Another woman said: I remember my mom always dressed me and my sister in matching dresses for the spring Easter service.

        My mom said a bird flew into the church through the big double doors at the front of the church on her wedding day and the wedding was delayed for half an hour until they finally managed to make the bird leave by swatting a broom in the air at it, a man said. 

        Another woman said, My church would have a holiday cookie bake as an activity for children one afternoon in December. Our church had a kitchen so we would bake the basic butter cookie dough that we cut into shapes of stars, bells, trees, and angels and then let all of the children decorate 4 cookies each to take home with them in foil or holiday plastic wrap. The kids could have milk with the cookies if they wanted. The dining hall doors led out to the children’s playground so they could play for a while after they decorated the cookies.

Candi interjected:  When I was a kid one winter my mom let us decorate our bedroom doors and I remember I covered the entire door with silver wrapping paper and glued cotton balls all over it to make it look like snow.

        A couple sitting nearby told everyone that they were Hindu and their child, Jarak, who was sitting beside them, attended the day care school at the church. We don't eat a lot of spaghetti,

the mom said, but we thought we'd try a few bites. The family was sitting at a table with their neighbors who were Christians whose son Mark also attended the daycare. Both of the boys were 3 years old. ‘I love curried peas and paneer cheese,’ said Candi, referring to a popular Indian dish, and the Hindu couple smiled and nodded.

        Another person reminisced about Vacation Bible School, which was a week during the summer school vacation where children could go to the church and learn about bible stories and how to handle life situations that might have moral dilemmas.

        Another person told about a reenactment at Easter time of Jesus' crucifixion and said I felt like I was in a time thousands of years ago.

        Well, that’s better than someone bringing a rattlesnake into a church service to test your faith.

        Another person said something I found very interesting. They explained about Maundy Thursday. A lot of Christian churches in the Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Methodist denominations offer services on Maundy Thursday in a special service to reenact the Last Supper before Jesus was betrayed by Judas. A tradition in the Maundy Thursday service is to strip the altar at the end of the service as the congregation and all clergy watch in silence. The persons removing all items from the altar store them in a room away from the altar.  When the altar is barren, everyone leaves the sanctuary in total silence. The barren altar represents ideas such as Jesus’ life was taken away and we are left empty, hurt, and grieving. Then the altar is redecorated on Trinity Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead.

        Another person said, This is a true story. I remember one time at my church, when the service was over and everyone was leaving, all of a sudden, we heard a woman give a startling cry. Her husband had been sitting beside her in the pew and had died while sitting there.

        Then there was some talk about funerals for a few minutes.

        I said, The thing about funerals that I don’t understand is that, usually at funerals, people show up that you haven’t seen for twenty years and you may not even recognize them. I just wonder why they wait until after someone dies to come see them. If they really cared about the person, why didn’t they come visit them before they died?

        Probably because most people are just so busy with their own lives but they still want to come show their respect for the life that just ended, Ben said.

      Maybe people should make better plans to try to see their friends occasionally, I replied.

        There was a piano in the fellowship hall and they played some hymns. We were singing ‘Let us gather at the River’ and ‘Amazing Grace.’

        The church had seen many baptisms, services, weddings, and funerals. They are a good group of people, the people at this dinner.

There are groups of friends at gatherings in all religions around the world and the friends cherish the happy moments.

CHAPTER 3

1986                    Humor

      Humor can be dangerous because humor can cause hurt feelings, even though most people intend for humor to be harmless.

      There are different types of humor. Some people think it is hilarious to smash a pie on a human face but some think it is not funny. Sometimes words are said as sarcastic humor in response to something said or done to the person who said the sarcasm.

      Humor can be a stress-reliever.

      Humor does not physically kill a person but humor can crush a person’s ego, so be careful what you say.

      Suppose a friend goes shopping and buys a new car, a new house, gets a new haircut, prepares a special meal for you, or does something nice for you and wants to share their new ‘trophy’ with you, that they are very proud of. If you say something humorous or critical to bring them down, it just hurts their feelings. The best thing to do is not voice your opinion if there is a possibility it could hurt their feelings. Say something nice and thank them for their effort. Everyone on this earth is struggling to find his or her way and survive physically and emotionally on the planet.

        Some people speak honestly and bluntly at all times, but many believe that it is wise to think before you speak. Every human being has their own unique emotional foundation; you cannot know everything that another human being has experienced in their mind and what information they have retained in their memory.  So when people speak to another person, they should not assume that the statement will be processed and received with the exact meaning the statement was intended to have.

CHAPTER 4

1987            Corporate Security

        It’s your responsibility to monitor the 40,000 employees of this company and report back anything of significance, said James Labrand, a corporate Vice-President, to Ken Smarr, the head of Corporate Security.

      Does this include putting cameras and listening devices in the bathrooms? asked Ken.

      We will never have this discussion again. Just get with Building Maintenance and Engineering and get it done. The IT unit of Corporate Security goes into effect today.

        The word got out through ‘the grapevine of the people’ that everyone was being watched through hidden cameras in the elevators, hallways, bathrooms, and the cafeteria.

        James Labrand himself was unaware that an obscure group of people had placed listening devices throughout corporate buildings. Bigger spies spied on lesser spies.

        A coworker, Max, down the hall from me, dropped by my cubicle and told me to not pick my nose or adjust my skirt in the elevators because now there were hidden cameras everywhere. I just laughed and said he was crazy. I told him There are no hidden cameras and returned to reading my 20,000 lines of computer logic and programming code.

        The next month I noticed a computer journal among the popular magazines and newspapers laying on the tables in the employee break room. I opened the computer journal and read an article about computer surveillance involving tiny cameras being connected to computer hardware and software and something called pixels enabling images to be seen on computer monitors (screens) in addition to text letters. So it must be true, I thought, spying with cameras.

        I wondered briefly for a second if my coworker Max had been spying